


Hallmark Doesn't Make Cards For This

by slamjam



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Ableist Language, F/F, Forgiveness, Gen, background Mick/Kali Prasad, copious use of lisa frank stickers, mentions of Suicide/Murder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-01-19
Packaged: 2019-03-06 18:06:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13416705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/slamjam/pseuds/slamjam
Summary: Seven months later there is a letter waiting for Kali on the banks of the Hudson river, wrapped in cellophane, sealed with a small Lisa Frank unicorn sticker.She burns it with her leftover cigarette and wipes her tears before they fall. She has no time for deserters.(Kali trying to deal with her messy feelings surrounding El's running away from her ft. irresponsible drinking and amateur crime scene cleanup)





	Hallmark Doesn't Make Cards For This

**Author's Note:**

> This probably needs more work but I Need To Get It Out Into The World. I loved Kali and I like the idea that she's mad as fuck at El for leaving her. El might have adopted a whole cadre of loving adult but for Kali, El is really it. That makes her rejection of her even more painful. 
> 
> (The warning for ableist language is for a few mentions of derogatory terms for schizophrenia. Kali is being self deprecating and kind of an asshole in that passage, plus she literally raised herself so I don't think she'd be very well versed on proper terms for mentally ill people.)

When Kali finds her next mark, she cuts her sister off cold turkey. She loves Jane more than the fucking stars, but if there’s no talking her into helping, there’s no talking at all until every one of the bastards that hurt them is dead. Period. She takes the hard route to saying goodbye; a fourth of vodka and a stormwall against psychic calls. No matter how hard Jane hammers and cries, she won’t give up, won’t let herself crack and answer. It takes a week for the kid to get the message and then she crawls out of her bedroom, shaking and drunk, falling into Mick’s arms, because it’s over. She probes the place where the pain was and it is raw, but empty. Her sister is dead to her. And so it stays. 

Seven months later there is a letter waiting for Kali on the banks of the Hudson River, wrapped in cellophane, sealed with a small Lisa Frank unicorn sticker.  
She burns it with her leftover cigarette and wipes her tears before they can fall. She has no time for deserters.

She finds another three days later in a target's house. It was messier than they’d planned, the blood went over the tarp, and now Dottie was on her hands and knees scrubbing the carpet. From the next room she could hear Axel betting Funshine the cops wouldn’t believe a suicide with fresh bleach on the carpet, and Fun replying that he always bet too heavy. Mick snorted from the sink where she was wiping down the gun. “That’s nothing new” 

“Let him bet what he wants Fun,” she says towards the open bedroom door “he’ll learn eventually if he fails enough.” 

“Fat chance if my uncle’s anything to go by” Dottie sneers

“Oh yeah?” Axel says walking into the room, “Well your uncle’s in jail so I wouldn’t bet anything on him” 

“I wasn’t talking about that one, dipshit. I was talking about the one who blew 50K of his kid’s college fund in one night at the poker table in Reno, like you would if you had the cash.” 

“Can you fuckers wait until we get back to start shit? I’m not having the neighbors hear us again because you can’t wait to start pissing each other off until we get home.” Mick places the gun pointedly on the counter.

The room jumps with the noise, startled into a kind of shamed silence. Dottie pulls away first. “Whatever.” She motions at Axel “You have dried blood on your chest” 

They finish the job in relative silence.

As she’s walking out of the house she finds it sitting on his empty dinner plate, with the word “sister” scratched out in blue ink. She rips it into little pieces and tosses them out the window one by one on the way home, watching them catch and warp in the wind and disappear into the darkness. 

Another one finds her a month later in bumfuck Ohio, on the side of the road in some dying mill town, where Axel is tweaking hard and they’re still 100 miles from their next target. Mick walks up next to her, slides an arm around her shoulders and says “I’ll figure out a way to get us some food tonight but I think I need your help.” And Kali is so tired, but she lifts her head and says “of course” because they need her. 

That night, she lies with her head tucked between her arms, listening to Funshine grind his teeth in his sleep. Instinctively she reaches out a pulse of clarity to him and he stills immediately; things are always worse for him when he’s unconscious, and then she stops. Asks herself how the hell she got back here. Living for other people and not herself.

And she knows this is the time to run. To get up quietly and leave the drunks and the schizos and the dirty rich kids behind and go seek her own revenge with someone who can take care of themselves but Mick is warm at her side, and she is tired. So she sleeps. When she wakes, there is a letter tucked between her jacket and her shirt with a large multicolored butterfly drawn in crayon on the outside. She holds it for a few seconds, drowsily contemplating its origins; and then when she remembers, sits straight up, casing the entrances (undisturbed) and her crew (alive, sleeping, peaceful). Searching for anything, any kind of sign that she was here. Nothing. Kali holds the letter like a knife, until it becomes so heavy in her hand that it starts to quake and tremor from holding herself still for so long but she keeps it there until it burns. Eventually she slips the letter into her pocket and lies back down. Dawn is hours away.


End file.
